08, Welcome to this web site. CANCELLATION POLICY Great question.In this day and age, almost everybody has aCANCELLATION POLICY.The Airlines overbook, we can NOT. Dentists try to overbook and charge for no shows.I am also a Quickbooks Consultant and like youstipulate a minimum of 2 hours.It is very hard to charge for a cancellation.*I tried Googling "*CANCELLATION POLICY andcancellation policy for professional services"No great answers. Hopefully other members will have some great suggestions.LUCKIEST

Luckiest, As a quickbooks consultant you will know you develop a personal relationship with these guys, you can spend hours with them on a one on one basis, so to punish them becomes 'hard' but they are affecting my daily work, and my profits by cancelling late.

You have to charge them and a good client would understand that. You apparently run a service based business, so anytime you block off time to be with one client, that is time you can't technically sell to another client.

So yes if you charge $100 an hour a good cancellation fee would be about a 3rd of that or $35.

If the services I'm providing involve "preparation time" on my part, or if I will incur any travel or communication expenses prior to performing a service, I explain all that up front and spell out the applicable charges (including when the client will incur those charges). The client is then responsible for that amount (and only that amount) if they cancel after that point. That approach is easy for clients to understand, plus their accounting departments, managers, and auditors will readily sign-off and pay the invoice for an agreed-upon "prep fee" or other direct cost -- whereas the bill for a "cancellation charge" (or, worse yet, two-hours of services that were never provided) can get hung up at about seven different levels of an organization.

So what if the service requires no billable prep work, travel, or direct communication costs? Then the client can cancel any time without cost or obligation. Yes, as Ed noted, I had blocked off time for that client, but there are plenty of worthwhile things to do with that time instead -- I can get ahead on a future project, coach an employee, donate a couple of hours to a non-profit, or even answer some questions here. The objective is to make it easier for the client to do business with me, not harder -- and charging a cancellation fee or billing the client for services that were not actually performed would make it harder in my view (and most likely cause me to lose any future work for that client).

For a cancellation with less than an hour's notice, that seems very reasonable to me. One option for implementing this would be to consistently invoice a line item like "Preparation, loading, and travel" for $35, and invoice your first two hours of work (your minimum) at $165. When you do the work, you make the same money and clients pay the same ($200 for the first two hours). When a client cancels on short notice, however, it will be easier for you to justify -- and easier for a client's accountant or senior manager to understand -- a $35 charge for work you had already done on their behalf prior to arrival (because that's an amount you always bill for that line item). Best wishes.

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